Convicted protester calls MAGA movement ‘a cult’
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Pamela Hemphill is a grandmother in her seventies. She was jailed in 2022 for taking part in the attack on the U.S. Capitol five years ago, but now says she will refuse a pardon from President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump has vowed to issue presidential pardons to supporters convicted for nonviolent offences on Jan. 6, 2021.
On that day, members of the “Stop the Steal” movement believing Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in November 2020 was obtained by fraud, sought to prevent certification of the election results in the Senate. They brawled with police officers, smashed windows and forced their way inside the Capitol building.
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The fray resulted in lawmakers and their aides fleeing in fear.
Hemphill had flown to Washington, D.C., from Idaho to support Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results, arriving on Jan. 5.
She filmed her actions that day and posted the footage on social media to later became known as the “MAGA Granny.”
“For a few years, she was sort of the unofficial videographer of the far-right in Idaho,” Heath Druzin, a Boise State Public Radio reporter told the Idaho Press. “She’d show up and she’d just be filming the whole time, going and asking people questions — sometimes a friendly interview and sometimes a pretty hostile one. I think that’s why a lot of people were aware of her, because she was always out there filming and pretending to be a journalist.”
The label “citizen journalist” is one that Hemphill claimed over the years, including for her videos from the Capitol. Now, she disavows it.
On Jan. 6, Hemphill was spotted pushing past police lines three times.
Hemphill was accused by federal prosecutors during her trial of “needlessly” exaggerating an image of herself as a frail woman who was overwhelmed and injured by the mob — to distract police officers from more violent protesters.
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Ultimately, she plead guilty to one count of demonstrating, picketing or parading in a Capitol building. Moreover, she apologized for “everything I said and did at the Capitol.”
She was sentenced to two months imprisonment, six-months of probation and $500 restitution toward the damages at the Capitol.
The prosecutors revealed the 2021 insurrection was not Hemphill’s first time storming a government building. They recounted how she had been part of a crowd that stormed the Idaho Statehouse in August 2020, shattering a glass door in the process, while protesting COVID-19 restrictions. The demonstration was led by anti-government militant Ammon Bundy, who has been involved in multiple standoffs with the federal government.
Hemphill rose to public view again in June 2023. Trump posted about her on Truth Social. He said it was “HORRIBLE” for her to spend more time in jail than Hunter Biden, who had faced sentencing for federal gun and tax evasion charges but was pardoned by his father.
Hemphill responded to Trump’s post on X by saying: “Please Donald Trump don’t be using me for anything, I’m not a victim of Jan6, I pleaded guilty because I was guilty! #StopTheSpin.”
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Hemphil became an outspoken opponent of Trump, appearing on CNN last summer and saying he was an aspiring dictator. She eventually appeared several times on CNN, as well as NewsNation and other outlets across the globe.
They all wanted a piece of the “Ex-MAGA Granny,” said Hemphill.
She went on to speak about the MAGA movement as a cult. Family members staged a political intervention after her release from prison, talking to her like a recovering addict.
“You don’t see it as a cult when you’re in it. You don’t recognize it.”
Now says she wants no part of any clemency he may offer.
She has come to that position, in part, due to online harassment from the MAGA movement.
“I’m not going to be bullied by MAGA anymore, as those who went as far as calling my Probation Officer trying to get me in trouble, backfired on them, thinking I would stop speaking out, just g(a)ve me more confidence to continue!” she wrote on X on Sunday, Jan. 12.
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“I will refuse a pardon from felon Trump!”
Hemphill made her comments in response to a post by former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger. He served on the bipartisan House committee that investigated the riot. He has publicly stated that he will reject a presidential pardon from President Joe Biden as a preemptive measure to protect him from potential retaliation by the FBI or Justice Department under Trump.
Hemphill has said that Trump’s rhetoric on immigration and the border is what drew her in initially.
“It’s like a scar that I have to carry for the rest of my life,” she told USA Today. “It’s gonna be that shame(ful) feeling. It’s not like I knew I was breaking the law, and I broke it anyway. However, I still was a part of that craziness, that cult. So it’s like something I can’t brush off.”
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